Tuesday, June 12, 2007

Unconscionable Movie Ticket Gouging?

I had a previous post on stamp prices and several posts on food prices here and here. When I came across this time series of movie ticket prices back to 1910, I was able to create the chart above (click to enlarge) that shows inflation-adjusted price indexes for movie tickets and gasoline over the last 50 years. As the chart shows, the real price of a movie ticket today ($6.58) is 80% higher than in 1957 when the nominal price of a movie was 50 cents, but $3.65 in today's dollars. In contrast, the average price of gasoline so far this year of $2.60 per gallon according to EIA data, is only about 15% above the real price in 1957, when gas sold for 31 cents per gallon ($2.26 in today's dollars). Bottom Line: Compared to buying a movie ticket, gasoline today is a real bargain. And yet you'll find 83,200 Google hits for the term "gasoline price gouging" and only 2 for "movie ticket gouging." And Congress has yet to introduce legislation to protect consumers from "unconscionable movie gouging," like for gas. Oh, and what about the price of popcorn once you enter the movie theater? If consumers ever needed legislation for protection against "unconscionable pricing," movie theater popcorn would be a good place to start.

Don't forget that in the last few years there has been a large increase in commercials made for television being shown in the theater, not to mention all those anti-piracy commercials telling people that paid for a ticket not to download a movie for free.